Zuerlein awaits chance to redeem himself

Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein awaits chance to redeem himself

Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/30317/rams-k-greg-zuerlein-awaiting-chance-to-redeem-himself

IRVINE, Calif. — Los Angeles Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein spent the entire offseason poring through video, trying to figure out how to improve on a season in which he missed a third of his field-goal attempts. Several of those misses sailed wide right, and Zuerlein noticed that sometimes he was opening his foot up just a tad. So he worked on it. He also only made a third of his attempts from 50-plus yards away, so he has made sure to take additional reps from a great distance.

Now he just needs to implement it all in a game.

The Rams’ preseason schedule is halfway done, and Zuerlein, in desperate need of a bounce-back season, has yet to attempt a field goal. He’s kicked three extra points and nothing else, with backup kicker Taylor Bertolet taking the other four. So Zuerlein is hoping for some work on Saturday, Week 3 of the preseason schedule, when the Rams play the defending-champion Broncos in Denver at 6 p.m. PT.

“I’ll never be mad scoring touchdowns,” Zuerlein said. “But ideally you get some kicks in the game, because you can’t mimic those in practice. You can get close, but to feel the rush, and just the atmosphere, everything — the actual goal post, instead of what we have here. It’s important to get that. I’m confident we will get some.”

Zuerlein, 28, made only 20 of his 30 field-goal attempts last season, a rate of 66.7 percent. It was by far the worst percentage in the NFL among kickers who attempted at least 20 field goals. The man directly above Zuerlein, Sebastian Janikowski of the Oakland Raiders, converted 80.8 percent of his field goals. And among those with at least 30 attempts since 2006, Zuerlein’s mark was the third-worst.

“It was not a good year, just simply put,” said Zuerlein, who made 82 percent of his attempts during his previous three seasons. “I’m a lot better than what I showed. Really, I just have to do better.”

It isn’t far-fetched to say that a better Zuerlein might have made the Rams a playoff team last year.

Consider: They lost nine games, and three of those losses were decided by three points. And in each of those, Zuerlein missed a field goal wide right. There was the Nov. 8 game in Minnesota, down 18-15 with less than two minutes left, when Zuerlein missed a 48-yard attempt (though he later made the 53-yard field goal that sent the game to overtime). There was the Nov. 22 game in Baltimore, when Zuerlein missed a 52-yard field goal with the score knotted at 13 and less than two minutes left. And there was the Jan. 3 finale from San Francisco, when he missed another 52-yarder with the Rams up by three late in the third quarter.

None of those were easy, of course.

Zurelein’s nine attempts from 50 or more yards out were tied for the second-most in the league last year. But his conversion rate from that distance (33 percent) was well below the NFL average (65 percent).

“The way I see it is the opportunities are there for me to be great,” Zuerlein said of how he evaluates his success rate from so far away. “Getting that many opportunities to kick from deep is awesome. Teams don’t even try them. And so I look at it from the standpoint of I’m given the opportunity to do really big things, and unfortunately I haven’t converted on them. And that’s what I’ve been working on in the offseason, trying to make as many of those long kicks as possible so I can convert on those for the team in the future.”